Liam Delap is Chelsea’s latest and most recent signing and one who many at the club hope will be a great success especially at the price he was bought at.

The move comes after sustained interest from Enzo Maresca and Joe Shields, both of whom have long admired Delap’s profile.

At a time where transfer fees border on insanity, £30 million represents a low-risk investment for a physically dominant, high-upside striker at almost any Premier League skill level.

The fee is cheap enough that Delap could turn out to be borderline useless and no one would necessarily bat an eyelid.

What is important about the deal is not the price, but what else we do in regards to the striker position – I will discuss this later on. 

Liam Delap as a player – my thoughts.

He’s nice. I’ve had to go back and find footage of Delap, though judging his overall game has been relatively hard given the types of opposition he has faced at Ipswich (pretty much no low blocks). 

Ultimately, I don’t think massively complex analysis on Delap needs to take place to see the rationale behind the signing.

Delap is cheap, has great experience playing alongside multiple Chelsea players and was previously coached by Enzo Maresca.

He is also someone that Enzo Maresca wants. It just doesn’t make sense to think it’s an illogical signing. 

Don’t get me wrong, I obviously have concerns:

Does Delap translate well to this Chelsea team? We only really have data from him at ‘poorer’ sides?

Will Delap hit the ground running or take time to adjust to a much bigger club?

Is he going to guarantee the same/better output on Jackson?

I don’t think, for the price, the answer to these questions is necessarily relevant and that’s probably why it’s one of the quicker signings Chelsea have made.

I’m not massively sure there’s been a need to overthink this signing unlike others. 

Delap, on the surface, is an irritant. He’s big, fast and annoying.

This in itself would earn Delap hundreds of brownie points if that was how Chelsea decided to buy players. 

It’s been around ten years since Chelsea have had a striker that is Liam Delap. 

The club has gone from poor finishing to lazy to poor pressing to weak in the air to weak to inconsistent to liabilities over the period of ten years and through countless strikers.

None of whom ever fit the category of – ‘Works hard, annoys defenders and is a tank up top’. 

And, don’t get me wrong, this is a very lazy and trivial method of talking about strikers but often football is a much simpler game than many try to make it. 

At the end of the day, you can do things technically well but lack the mental side to the game or you could have an incredible mental attitude to your game but lack the technical details – this is the challenge of football.

But ultimately? Some things just make sense – some players are just good or not good.

Delap is a player that is infinitely more likely to be/become a good player than a bad one, and for £30M it would be mindless to pass up on the opportunity. 

Put it this way, Football, and more specifically the Premier League has evolved in a way where the striker needs to be good at more things than just kicking the ball in the net.

Strikers now need to press, hold up the ball, pass, shoot, head the ball, defend corners etc. 

Delap can do all of these. Maybe not to a top level. Maybe he isn’t a box dominant striker (unproven yet).

But what he is is someone that’s had a top footballing education at Manchester City and is someone that will do what any modern side needs their striker to do. 

Delap represents the true meaning of an almost zero-downside and maximum-upside signing. 

He’s not great? Oh no! We can flip him for the price we bought him at easily. 

He’s great? Brilliant! We got him for just £30M. 

What the data says:

The data isn’t an accurate indicator of Liam Delap.

As with everything involving data, the most important thing here is the context behind the numbers I am about to show.

We have to remember that Liam Delap has done everything below in an Ipswich team as opposed to a Chelsea team that created 199.2% on Ipswich’s season xG total.  

In fact, it is likely a testament to Delap’s ability that he is competitive in a fair amount of the metrics I am comparing above despite the disparity in quality between the two teams of each striker. 

Nicolas Jackson suffers from having incredible underlying metrics, finding himself in the top 10 of quite a lot of the important ones when judging strikers compared to the league.

What consistently lets him down is that he also finds himself in the top 10 of metrics dictating that he consistently is a poor finisher. 

The numbers of Delap are actually comparable to top strikers, despite playing for Ipswich.

Now, don’t get me wrong, when you see the following tables you will see that he is beaten by most strikers I’m comparing them to but again – context is vitally important here. Delap is doing this at Ipswich. 

I think it’s pretty obvious here that Delap has not really played with the sole intention of scoring goals, but more with the intention to help Ipswich progress up the pitch (hence him beating everyone but Isak in those metrics). 

Isak is probably the global benchmark right now of the ‘modern’ striker that will score goals, help the team progress and also press. 

I can see Delap, in a better team, compare to Isak. Maybe he will be better, maybe not, but I can see similarities creeping through in the data. 

I think it’s genuinely impressive that Delap is not ‘trampled’ by strikers that have significantly less duties than he does and are in far greater teams.

Again, translation between teams is a dodgy thing and is one of the key reasons data scouting isn’t necessarily a guarantee predictor of how players will perform long term but I personally see enough here that’d help me draw confident conclusions.

So, is Delap going to bang or bust?

I think Delap does well. I was skeptical at first but I see enough in the data and the player himself that fills me with enough confidence to say he scores around the fifteen goal mark.

I just can’t see him not (if he plays consistently and remains injury free etc.).

He’s not bad enough that I’d see him and the data and be concerned over his output next season.

Chelsea create a ridiculous amount of chances, it just doesn’t feel that way as the finishing is subpar.

Unless we get a wildly different version of Delap to what he’s been so far in his career, I struggle to see him struggle. 

Put it this way. If Jackson can score at least 10 goals two seasons running, Delap can match that and probably score more. 

This isn’t me saying that Delap is better than Jackson, there’s no conclusive evidence to suggest that just yet.

But there is enough evidence to suggest that the quality gap between the two is minimal and I see a bigger chance Delap bursts onto the scene of a consistently clinical and effective striker much sooner than Jackson who still has a long way to go developmentally. 

Talent or no talent, Delap benefits from a better footballing education and better technical fundamentals.

That almost always tends to translate into developmental trajectories – Delap is probably going to be the end product sooner than Jackson. 

Chelsea now have two talented players on their books for good prices.

Will they add a third in Ektike? I hope so, but that’s something to discuss if Ekitike progresses.